Modern automobiles and other vehicles may include sophisticated on-board computer systems that monitor the status and performance of various components of the vehicle (for example, the vehicle engine, transmission, brakes, suspension, and/or other components of the vehicle). Many of these computer systems may also adjust or control one or more operating parameters of the vehicle in response to operator instructions, road or weather conditions, operating status of the vehicle, and/or other stimuli.
Various types of microcontroller or microprocessor-based controllers installed in many conventional vehicles include supervisory control modules (SCMs), engine control modules (ECMs), and controllers for various vehicle components (for example, anti-lock brakes, electronically-controlled transmissions, or other components), among other modules. Such controllers may receive data from one or more sensors or other sources, process the data to generate suitable output signals, and provide the output signals to actuators, dashboard indicators and/or other data responders, as appropriate. The various components of a vehicle-based control system typically communicate with each other and/or with sensors and/or actuators across serial and/or parallel data links. Today, data processing components within a vehicle are commonly interlinked by a data communications network such as a Controller Area Network (CAN), an example of which is described in ISO Standard 11898-1 (2003).
Because vehicles may now process relatively large amounts of digital data during operation, it can be an engineering challenge to ensure that the processed data is accurate and reliable. As digital data is stored, processed, consumed and/or shared between or within the various data processing components of a vehicle, for example, bit errors and the like can occur due to environmental factors, hardware faults, data transmission errors, and other causes. As a result, various techniques have been developed to ensure the integrity of data processed and transferred within the vehicle. However, because there may be limited space in a system for the transmission of serial data messages at any particular time, there is a need for securing data messages while reducing data message size and/or the number of data messages.
It remains desirable to formulate systems and methods for ensuring data message security within vehicle control systems while reducing data message size and/or the number of data messages transmitted within or between vehicle systems. Other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.